I've started a Bitcoin raffle service similar to BitLotto (no affiliation), but with cheaper tickets (0.10 BTC), more frequent draws (as soon as 100 tickets are sold), and with smaller payouts (10 BTC to start).

The first raffle will be for at least 10 BTC. I say at least 10 BTC, because the drawing will be held at midnight (UTC) on the day the prize pool reaches 10 BTC. Tickets are 0.10 BTC each, so 100 tickets need to be sold to meet the minimum prize pool. All transactions posted before midnight (UTC) on that day will be counted in the drawing, so the prize could likely be more than 10 BTC. I'm keeping the ticket price low so it's easier for people new to Bitcoin to participate.

I will only be keeping 0.5% of the take to help with overhead, so the payout will be 99.5% of whatever is collected. So on a 10 BTC prize pool, I will make a whopping 0.05 BTC. So you can see I'm definitely not in this for the money, I'm doing it for fun and to help promote Bitcoin.

I've taken some steps to ensure the system is cheat-proof. Each ticket is made up of the following data elements:

Daily3 mid-day numbers from MichiganLottery.com from the day the prize pool minimum is met

Bitcoin transaction hash that sent the payment

number 0001 thru number of tickets you purchased (if you sent 3x the ticket price, your tickets would be: 0001, 0002, 0003)

The first Bitcoin block number with a timestamp after midnight on the day the prize pool minimum is met

SHA256 hashes are calculated for the data string (made up of the four elements listed above) for each ticket sold, then sorted (0-9,A-Z). The winner is the ticket at the top of the list.

Still, I know this will require some level of trust. That's another reason why I'm keeping the ticket price and prize fairly small right now. I want people to see that it will actually work and they are not being lied to.

The first raffle was a big success. A huge thanks to everyone who bought a ticket!

I decided to try something a little different this time. A new raffle is now open. This one is a 50/50 raffle with 50% of the prize going directly to the winner and 50% going to a charity of the winner's choice. Until I can set up a system to allow easy verification of payment, the winner will be asked to choose from a charity or non-profit that already accepts Bitcoin like the ones listed here: http://bitcoinsforcharity.org/charities

The total prize will be at least 20 BTC (10 BTC for the winner and 10 BTC for charity). The ticket price has been lowered to just 0.01 for this raffle, so it will end after 2000 tickets have been sold.

Good luck!

note: this is double posted in the Newbies forum so everyone can see it.

I decided to try something a little different this time. A new raffle is now open. This one is a 50/50 raffle with 50% of the prize going directly to the winner and 50% going to a charity of the winner's choice. Until I can set up a system to allow easy verification of payment, the winner will be asked to choose from a charity or non-profit that already accepts Bitcoin like the ones listed here: http://bitcoinsforcharity.org/charities

The total prize will be at least 20 BTC (10 BTC for the winner and 10 BTC for charity). The ticket price has been lowered to just 0.01 for this raffle, so it will end after 2000 tickets have been sold.

Good luck!

note: this is double posted in the Newbies forum so everyone can see it.

It's been more than 12 hours since you posted the new raffle system (according to the timestamp of that post), and you've sold ~2.5% of your total available tickets (55/2000 as of right now). At this current rate it will take you at least 20 days to achieve the final ticket count (50 tickets per 12 hours == 100 tickets per day == 20 days to reach 2000 tickets). Just giving you some raw stats in case you wish to reconsider your goals here, especially as momentum for any drive like this tends to die down rather quickly after the first few days.